Genevieve Douglass

In an earlier article, I described my growing awareness of fear of failure, how it became a familiar part of myself at home in my psyche. So, how do I deal with this unhelpful little shadow, my fear of being valueless?

Countering the Evidence

One way might be to counter that basket of evidence. I’ve learned a lot more since my Ph.D. program rejections about what should be in an application. I now know why my prior submission was considered weak: incoherent recommendations, a weak math background demonstrated by relatively unimpressive GRE math scores, and too many hypotheses festooning my essays. In many ways, I feel much better. I no longer feel like it was about me. I put together a pretty unconvincing package.

I feel better until I consider what others will think of me based on the simple fact: I was rejected from 13 programs. That’s what makes up the heavy contents of my basket of evidence, the little facts that might be interpreted to reflect something negative, maybe indicating a pattern of failure.

Even as I write this, I feel a draft of doubt emanating from the basement, blowing away some of the comfort in realizing that my application didn’t represent me well.

I wonder if I’m just making excuses. Perhaps if I were smart enough to get in, I would have gotten in. Can I really justify it? What about all those other failures in the basket? Can I really justify all of them away, too? What’s reality, here? Overall, I’m scared people will judge me negatively, they won’t hire me, and I’ll end up feeling valueless forever. I’m scared I can’t trust myself.

Distinguishing Shared Reality from Illusion

While working in labs, I learned about a theory of our universal need to know the truth. Or at least, to think we know the truth. I certainly don’t want to be deluding myself, particularly about something as important to my life as what I might do with it. According to Hardin and Higgins, one way that people think that they know the truth is when other people validate their perception, creating a shared sense of reality. We want our impressions and beliefs to be confirmed. At least, I do. The admissions committees at these schools didn’t validate my reality. I agree with them, now, but at the time, it surprised me. We did not share a reality, and I didn’t get the acceptance that I wanted. Therefore, I failed. (Thirteen times.)

I’m pretty sure people can look at almost any rejection or failure as a lack of validation. When the world isn’t validating what you think is true, it becomes hard to trust yourself.

But history has noted at least a few times in which shared realities ended up being untrue or at least a little nuts in hindsight, such as the sun revolving around the Earth, Stravinsky’s music being horribly received, the beliefs that led to the 2008 economic downfall.

So, while it’s natural to want some external validation and to be accepted by your group, there’s a point at which it isn’t helpful. If I trusted myself I wouldn’t need other people’s validation, but I’ve made my self-trust dependent on external validation. How do I break this dependency and trust in myself without so much reliance on what others think?

Building Self-Trust

One way might be to fill a mental basket with evidence that I am capable, in other words, to build self-efficacy. To this end, I retrieved my GRE books from storage and have poked at them on and off for the last year. It’s taken me a while, but that panicky feeling is beginning to seem manageable. The sight of the words: “Two trains are traveling in opposite directions…” still creates a quiet gasp, and an inclination toward the thought, “Argh. I don’t know how to do this one.” But, if I actively pull my thoughts back to the math problem at hand, and ask myself, “What do we need to know? What do we know already?” I can begin to see a path.

I’m realizing that I just have to get over that initial wave of fright when I encounter a problem for which I don’t immediately see the answer, It comes, I notice it, and it eventually subsides, somehow on its own. Now, overall, I don’t feel I would be risking that much by re-taking the GRE.

It was as though there was this hole where math skills should have been, and I had laid a few branches over it and hoped that no one would notice and that it would hold my weight. Now, I see that it’s filled in a bit with dirt and pebbles and that I can keep filling it in. I can trust that I will do better and overcome that initial panic, because I’ve witnessed myself overcome it a few times before. Eventually, there will be solid ground under my feet in that area. Confidence.

Part of that confidence comes from seeing myself do the math. Another part of it is that I’m no longer trying to cover it up.

Owning my Self-Worth

I think I need to get over the fright that others might not validate me. I need to see that I will still be okay even if they don’t. That’s part of the exercise in publishing this article. No doubt some people will read this, see that I’ve been rejected so much, and make the judgments about me that I’ve been so afraid of. I’ll just have to deal with that. Two things allow me to quiet my little basement tenant enough to write: knowing that I’ve been authentic in writing about this tender subject and knowing that my intention is to help others normalize their own fears and lay out some options for peeling them away.

I’ll bet my self-worth is highly related to my self-trust. If I valued myself more, I might trust myself more. When I finally stop to think about what I consider truly valuable in myself, it’s not how well I do on the GREs, but my ability to get better at them. It’s not that I have or don’t have a Ph.D., it’s my curiosity. It’s my ability to accept others completely and my ability to listen closely. Really, it comes back to my authenticity. I value myself most when I can slow down and notice what’s going on in my mind and body enough, not driven by the need for external validation or fear of rejection. It seems the very thing that makes me most worthwhile in my own eyes is what has gotten lost in the shadows of fear and doubt.

According to Susan Harter, authenticity is knowing yourself and acting accordingly. But knowing yourself isn’t always so easy. In writing this out, you can see that I had been distancing myself from these fears for years, and yet they were quietly motivating my decision not to apply, not to charge more, and the occasional Chihuahua shakes that came over me when considering my future. It took some serious mindful time, trying to tune into everything I was sensing. I’m still not sure I’ve caught everything.

Acting accordingly is also not so simple. As I mentioned, I need to get over any concerns about how others might judge my story. Of course I’m hoping for good reactions. That’s still hoping for external validation in a way, but the thing that makes it different is that I’ve tried to let you into my head as much as I can in order to give you the sense of what I actually experience. I think that might allow you to empathize, which I think makes this more of a connection than a request for a pat on the back.

After two years of working in various labs, organizing mind-melting spreadsheets of data too big to fit in a single excel file, coding minute gestures and facial expressions, and collecting saliva in test tubes, I had gathered my recommendations and written up my statements of purpose. I awaited responses from 13 social psychology doctorate programs.

At first it came in just a trickle. “We regret to inform you…” You can tell that it’s a ‘no’ just by the size of the envelope. After opening the mailbox to four of those, I took the mail key off of my key ring, leaving the dirty work to my boyfriend. Every time one came in, it seemed to be yet another reason that I wasn’t good enough.

Yes, yes, they could only accept one or two candidates, and most of the professors I requested to work with hadn’t even met me. They probably had their own research assistants who were applying. Sure, that’s possible. Also there were still nine more schools. Some of them weren’t even that great, so I was bound to get in somewhere.

But the rejections kept coming. I didn’t get into any of the 13 programs that I had applied to. THIRTEEN failures. Over a thousand dollars in submission fees.

This was three years ago, and I haven’t applied since. It’s hard to pin down exactly why. One reason is that, off and on, I figure maybe I don’t really need a Ph.D. after all, but this echoes the false justification of the boy rejected on the schoolyard who yells back at the girl, “You’re ugly, anyway.” Another reason might be the thought of retaking the GREs, which initiates a tingling down my arms, leading to the slow perspiration of my palms and the quickening of my breath like a paranoid dachshund. Lastly, to pull off the remaining tattered bathrobe: A fear of failure.

When I listen a little more closely, that fear is specific. What if I don’t get in, yet again? It would be more evidence that I’m not good enough to get a Ph.D.. It would mean that something I submitted was off. I should have rewritten that statement of purpose. I should have studied for the GRE writing section a little bit beforehand. Or maybe my ideas are just not interesting. Would I really want to reapply? Or should I take this as a hint?

Aftermath of Failure

As I write all this down, I see immediately how irrational it is. How one-sided. I made everything all my fault automatically. I even backspaced the more embarrassingly dramatic stuff that came to mind first, but I’ll show you here: They rejected me because they think I’m not smart enough to go this route. Maybe I’m not — They’re experts at this, right? I’ve been preparing for this for over two years, which seems like plenty of time. I guess even they don’t value me. No one values me. (Whoa, this last thought makes my eyes water.) This is the real fear: I’m not valuable.

Now that I’ve told you about it, I can easily see how over-the-top these thoughts are. “Nobody” values me? That’s a pretty big leap, I suppose, but when these thoughts crept through my mind, they went by automatically, hardly even verbalized by my inner narrator. A stinging feeling still lingers in my chest, even from just rereading these words. It seems that those thoughts that slip right past, kicking up a trail of hormones, are often ones we end up believing, whether we want to or not.

Until writing this, I realize that a lot of the thoughts I’m describing have been buried, latently determining many of my decisions. I had put my GRE books in storage, decided that I wasn’t going to re-apply, or at least, I wasn’t going to deal with deciding whether or not to reapply for a while. I sputtered for a while, teaching yoga, doing some team consulting, and writing music. All this was for very little pay, and much of it for free. This isn’t because I’m a philanthropist at heart, but because I felt that I wasn’t worth charging for.

Looking at Failure More Clearly

Sad, right? That’s not why I’m telling you. I’m telling you because I want you to see that I have been quietly making a mental basket full of evidence showing why I’m not valuable (oh jeeze, the watery eyes again, the lump in the throat). I’ve probably been doing it since I was a little kid. Remember the time I totally forgot my violin piece at my Brownies talent show?

I’ve been developing this fear of being valueless, making it a warm, cozy home and knitting it a hat. It has been quietly influencing my decisions. Decisions about what I do for a living and how much I make are big ones, but it shows up even in small ways, such as the guilt I feel for not accomplishing my goals for the day. Then the fear subtly smirks, adding yet another nugget of evidence to the basket.

Sometimes, there is a little piece of me that subtly makes a choice not to push through my work and actually helps this fear become a belief. I add another stockinet row to that hat when I vaguely decide not to tough out my last task because, in some small way, I want that belief to be correct. At least I’ll be right, I guess.

Being Right or Facing Fear?

Why would I ever want this belief to be confirmed? At the time, way back in the dark basement of my mind where this decision is quietly made, it seems like being right might be worth something. Writing it out makes it seem so illogical, so surprising, to think that I would want to fail, even in a small way. The only rationale I can come up with is that there might be some comfort in knowing myself, even if it’s not the self that I want to be.

I know that fear is down there, and I don’t know what life would be like without it. Maybe it’s like some sort of Stockholm syndrome, but it seems like I have embedded this fear in my identity. I’ve learned it about myself: I am creative, female, brunette, intolerant of any kind of bean, and scared that I’m worthless. This insidious fear has been living in my brain basement for a long time now. It’s no surprise that it has a toothbrush in the upstairs bathroom and tells me what it wants for dinner.

So, how do I deal with this unhelpful little shadow and rebuild my identity? Seeing what it’s been up to and how it manifests is undoubtedly the first step. Stepping back and looking at it seems to take away much of its power. When I’m listening closely to its whisper with curiosity and perhaps a bit of humor, my judgment of this little guy drops away. When my judgment is gone, I am free to consider other ways of dealing with it.

In Part 2 of this series, I’ll talk about specific actions that are helping me wrestle my confidence from its clenched mitts.

From the time of the Ancient Greeks through the Middle Ages, work was considered something that got in the way of loftier pursuits of the mind and spirit. The term calling referred only to positions in the Church.

But Martin Luther, with the unfolding of the Protestant Reformation, broadened the definition and changed how people viewed work. He espoused the view that any productive type of work, if done earnestly, could please God and help society. (Just so you know, productive work didn’t include prostitution or usury.) John Calvin later added that calling is really when you’re using your God-given gifts for the benefit of mankind. Thus emerged what we hear of as the Protestant or Puritan work ethic.

In the last few years, the term calling has been used in psychology to describe a sense of working because you love the work, not for money or respect, but because it gives you a sense of meaning. About a third of people view their work this way, while a third of us see work as a career, something to build status and find constant achievement, and a third of us see work more the way the Ancient Greeks did, something we get through so that we can pursue our calling as a potato sculptor.

The lucky 33% of people who have a calling are more satisfied with their lives and jobs, have fewer health problems, feel more energetic, experience more meaning and significance from work, and miss fewer days of it. They also tended to make more money and think of themselves as having a higher social status than people with careers and jobs, so perhaps some jobs are more conducive to being callings than others. However, researcher Amy Wrzesniewki and her colleagues have found that even janitors can find meaning in the work.

A Longitudinal View of Callings

So how does one find a calling?

Researchers Shasa Dobrow and Jennifer Tosti-Kharas suggest that it might not be something you can find, but rather, something that develops. Instead of having a calling, it’s something that you experience. It may be that people who say they’ve found their calling are looking back on their life and creating a cohesive picture. This is part of our tendency to make meaning out of things retrospectively, but it fogs our ability to see how callings develop prospectively.

In Dobrow’s longitudinal research, not only does it seem that a calling develops, but it can also change throughout life. The participants in her study were teenagers when the study began, taking part in elite music summer camps. Over a period of seven years, Dobrow checked in to see how they felt as time passed and to find out what they went on to do in adulthood. To gauge their experience of calling, they indicated how strongly they felt in response to statements such as, ”Playing music is a deeply moving and gratifying experience for me,” “I would continue being a musician even in the face of severe obstacles,” and “I would sacrifice everything to be a musician.”

The people who started out with the strongest sense of calling were highly involved in music and felt particularly comfortable around musicians. They were pursuing things like membership in orchestras or chamber ensembles, and they took private lessons in addition to going to high school. They strongly agreed with statements such as, “I feel more comfortable around musicians than around any other group of people.”

But, this group, high in both musical activity and social comfort, experienced the steepest decrease in their sense of calling over time. It might be that as they discovered the real road to being a musician, they felt less excited about their path. Many of these kids wanted to land a job in an orchestra, and other research has found orchestra members low on job satisfaction. Regardless of the reason, it’s fascinating to see that sense of calling can change over time. You probably remember your first passion, but had to go a different route when your college didn’t offer a bachelor’s in magic.

Calling, defined as a consuming, meaningful passion toward a domain, can change over time.

If you’re involved in activities relating to a particular domain, you’re probably sniffing out something like a purpose.

Signs that this might be the domain for you include feeling particularly comfortable around the people there, feeling that they understand you, feeling at home, and feeling that that you can completely be yourself.

What about Ability?

Wait a sec, don’t I need to be good at something?

The ability of the students did not predict their experience of calling. However, if they had a strong sense of calling, they tended to perceive their abilities to be strong, though not necessarily the other way around. You don’t need to be good objectively at your craft to experience it as a calling, but you probably think you are. Whose perception is the real one, anyway?

But Drummers Don’t Make Money

According to Dobrow and Tosti-Kharas, your calling does not have to be synonymous with your work. The participants in the study were still in school when they already felt so passionately about music. It may be that you feel your calling is being a parent, or tutoring kids for free in your spare time, or training overweight felines to run on large, expensive treadmills.

Martin Seligman holds that meaning comes from contributing to something greater than yourself. This probably means it’s important to be able to affect people with what you’re doing. So, McFly, you may never find your density if you don’t show anyone those science fiction stories.

However, there are more than a few people who have followed their lonely hearts, unappreciated by society at the time, later to be revered in history. A great one is Henry Darger, who was a janitor at a hospital, but secretly wrote and illustrated epic fantasy stories, which were only discovered after his death and are now worth many thousands of dollars. It’s hard to know if he experienced a sense of calling toward his work, but there must have been something driving him.

So, what does drive us?

To some, the definition of a calling might be daunting. It could be construed as a goal to be achieved. Goals are sometimes useful, but at the same time, if they are too specific and challenging, they can undermine the very curiosity that spurs us and replace it with fear, which narrows our attention, preventing us from seeing possibilities.

Sometimes it’s useful to narrow attention and create a preventative mindset, for example in motivating safety precautions. However when you’re doing something creative, and if you’re doing something challenging, it probably requires creativity, you want to be moved by your interest and curiosity, much like play. You want a vital and autonomous motivation, the feeling that this is something you are pulled to do. This is very much the kind of motivation described by people who experience a calling. “I don’t know what they could do that would make me leave. Even if I wasn’t getting paid, I’d still be here,” were the words of a zookeeper involved in a different study on calling.

It can also help to know that what we’re doing has some sort of impact on the world. Wharton professor Adam Grant did a study on university call center employees who were calling to raise money for scholarships. One group of callers got to spend 5 minutes being thanked by a student who had received a scholarship as a result of the call center’s efforts. Grant checked back a month later and found that the callers who had met the scholarship recipient persisted longer (142% more phone time) and performed better (171% more money raised). Creating a sense of meaning and significance is actually part of the definition of a calling.

Aside from your innate curiosity and hope to impact the world, the last big thing that galvanizes people is other people. Feeling like you belong, as Dobrow’s study attests, is a big source of motivation. (Remember how much you wanted Airwalks back in middle school just because everyone else had them?)

Why you can’t look for your calling

Doing creative work and focusing in on a goal (like picking out a purpose) are part of separate neural processes. The more engaged you are searching for your purpose, the less imaginative you can be, according to recent assimilations in neuroscience. Purpose is probably something that will require some inspiration. So, even though you know you want to write a book, the actual writing of the book can be hampered by aiming for a book. You just need to get on with the writing and ignore that it may or may not be a book. At some point you’ll want to pop your head up and see if you’re making any sense. But that’s a different mindset, best saved for a different time.

In other words, spending your time with your foot on the ship bow, your hand at your brow blocking the sun, hoping that your calling will appear, spouting like a sea sprite, is probably going to keep you from developing it. (Unless you feel called to pursue your calling, which I guess could happen.) In fact, pursuing such happiness can actually detract from being happy. It’s just like being in a relationship. If you’re still looking around at other people, you’re not committed to making what you’ve got into something amazing.

What are the big take-aways about calling? It’s okay if you don’t know what your calling is. Just say that to yourself and let it sit for a second. Just notice what you’re curious about and who you enjoy being around. Follow what spurs you into action. It might be comforting to know that even if you did find your calling, that feeling would probably change eventually.

In a 2012 Swiss study, researchers Friese, Messner, and Shaffner tested whether a brief period of meditation would lessen the depletion effects of self-control that have been described by Roy Baumeister. Their subject pool was from a group of people taking a three-day introductory meditation seminar. In this training, participants learned to become more aware of the subtleties of their breath and sensations of their body and to notice non-judgmentally what felt comfortable or uncomfortable in their lives.

The researchers approached participants at the end of their 2nd day at the seminar and asked the experimental group to perform an emotional regulation task, then to meditate for five minutes. Then the participants performed a second attentional-control task, meant to tax self-control resources. The meditators did not show self-control depletion effects on the second task compared to a non-meditating group. All participants had attended the seminar.

This is the first study I’ve seen that actually tests the effects of a brief period of meditation on self-control ability. Previous work has shown that trait mindfulness is associated with better self-control. This study was looking at the immediate effects of state mindfulness.

Mindful Self-Regulation versus Self-Control

In a 2007 paper, Brown and colleagues describe their concept of mindfulness as it differs from self-control. They give an amusing example to illustrate their point:

“A student with a large pimple on her nose comes into a professor’s ofﬁce, and his attention is likely to be drawn to her prominent blemish. In a self-controlled mode of regulating his attention, thoughts, emotions, and verbal behavior, he will invoke one or more preconceived, socially-prescribed standards of conduct that may dictate avoidance of this sight so that he can properly focus on the conversation. He may redirect his attention, perhaps to the student’s eyes, or even to a spot on the wall above her head, with this goal in mind, and will periodically self-assess to see how well he is meeting his standard(s) of behavior.”

In contrast, they describe a possible mindful self-regulation as allowing the professor to non-judgmentally attend to the student. Since his attentional capacity is not compromised by focusing on whether he is adhering to a particular standard of conduct, he can choose his behavior rather than being driven by what he feels he ought to do.

According to a 2011 Buddhist model of mindfulness designed by Grabovich and colleagues in British Columbia, mindfulness breaks our usual perceptive cycle. Normally, we become briefly aware of a sensation, either something that comes into our senses or a cognition in the mind. This happens so fast that we have dozens of sensations in the space of a second. With this awareness comes a “feeling tone” of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Pleasant feelings give rise to desire, while unpleasant ones create aversion. There is a distinction here: the desire or aversion is not in response to the object itself, but in response to the feeling tone that it engenders.

Thoughts that occur in response to a desire or an aversion carry their own feeling tone, and more thoughts occur in response to those. Because the awareness of the sensations is so fleeting, it’s easy for this mental proliferation to become habitual. According to the model, it is this habitual attachment and aversion that causes suffering.

When we’re regulating, we’re trying to achieve a goal of some sort, either a desire for something to come about (desire), or a desire for something not to come about (aversion). Could it be that when we are experiencing self-control depletion, we are experiencing some form of suffering?

In this model, mindfulness is defined as a moment-by-moment observing of impermanence, suffering, and not-self. In other words, mindfulness involves noticing the impermanence of sensations and feeling tones, the suffering caused by habitual desire or aversion, and the idea that none of the sensations, desires, or aversions create the self. Thus observing can break the chain of thought, the habit, and eventually, the suffering.

The acceptance or non-judgment that is brought to the practice reduces the negative thoughts that might otherwise make the practice itself a source of aversion. Additionally, the authors state, “acceptance helps relax the attention and allows rapid, discrete sensations to be more easily noticed and followed during mindfulness practice.” Basically, this harkens back to Barbara Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory that positive emotion relates to expansive use of attention, while negative emotions narrow attention. Acceptance allows for ease of noticing.

How does this apply?

While this makes some sense to me, what really brought it home was revamping my understanding of what mindfulness really is. The most helpful explanation I’ve come across is Sharon Salzberg’s concept that mindfulness is noticing. This small adjustment in definition allowed me to more easily see why meditation is useful.

To illustrate what I mean, let’s take the example practice that begins by focusing on the breath. When a thought comes into mind, you notice it, and then bring your attention back to the breath. Mindfulness is in the noticing. Maybe I notice that I like a certain type of breath pattern better than another. This is an attachment to that type of breath. I might also notice that my breath occurs without my trying, separating my breath from my self (not-self). Mindfulness is not that I can stay focused on a sensation. Instead, when a thought or feeling arises, I notice. The breath itself is a point of concentration, so that when a thought or feeling comes into mind, I’m able notice it.

To apply this to self-control, let’s look at another example. Let’s say I’m trying to eat healthier food, but I am presented with a cookie. The unmistakable smell of homebaked food wafts through the air, and I’m smitten by the perfect sheen of the chocolate morsels, indicating a soft, warm, meltiness. These sensations might not be cognitive, but I have some awareness of them, and they are a trigger, creating the desire to eat the cookie. Mindfully, I notice these desires, which immediately removes me from them. Now I’m busy noticing instead of desiring.

Basically, instead of thinking and feeling, one is noticing. Meditation is the practice of noticing.

Meditation as a Self Control Exercise?

The study by Friese and colleagues helps answer a long-frustrating question: If self-control is like a muscle that you can fatigue, and if mindfulness is a way of exercising and thus strengthening self-control, then wouldn’t meditation practice cause fatigue and deplete self-control as well?

Based on this study, in which participants had spent all day at a meditation seminar prior to participating, meditation does not cause depletion. It seems like it could actually replenish self-control resources, but I think there’s room for another possibility: It seems to me that this is not because mindfulness helps build the self-control muscle, but it helps avoid using the self-control muscle altogether. The brief mindfulness meditation in the study might have allowed participants to enter a more mindful state, which they could maintain through the second self-control exercise.

So how does mindfulness improve self-control? It doesn’t. Mindfulness is the path to autonomous regulation. I don’t think it necessarily replenishes a self-control juice (otherwise, meditating for longer should increase the amount, right?) but I think it gets us ready to use the noticing skill in other situations.

The pursuit of purpose has been on my mind lately, as I slowly return to a career in music. I originally left this career because I felt it was nearly impossible to pursue a purpose through it. Looking back, I was a little myopic. I have since found music to be the most meaningful thing that I can offer the world. One reason is because no one else can put together the notes and ideas the way that I do, so it’s particular to me. Apparently, I value this very much. But uniqueness as a value is a topic for another time. Today I’d like to tackle relatedness and how it relates to purpose.

Quick Refresher on the Basic Needs

Ryan and Deci suggest that we all require the same three basic needs to thrive: Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness. Autonomy is a sense of freedom and choice. Competence is a sense of mastery that comes from experiencing our skills being honed. Relatedness is the feeling of connection and identification with others. Of the three, relatedness seems the toughest to connect it to other theories and constructs. Still, I’d like to explore it a little.

I am now spending the majority of my time composing and writing songs, and my mid-morning outing to procure coffee is my primary interaction with other human beings. That’s a little bit of in-the-moment relatedness, I suppose, but usually the exchange is as minimal as it can get.

Though my day-to-day routine is pretty devoid of human interaction, I don’t feel the sense of loneliness that I used to experience. Maybe this is because I’m getting old(er). But I also think that my motivation for writing is entirely different these days. I frequently write songs as gifts for others. The best example is a lullaby I wrote for my baby niece. I intended this song as a gift from the moment I started writing it. I think this qualifies as a purpose. I was also in flow as I worked on some aspects of it (I’m not sure you can sing without being in flow), and I was certainly following my own interest as I chose the notes, harmonies, rhythms, and lyrics. In sum, I think that the process of creation was both purpose-oriented and intrinsically motivated.

This little three-minute piece of music has turned out to be a major point of connection with my brother and his family. He sings it to both of his daughters every night (though his older daughter has her own special lullaby, too, she only wants to hear this one), and they occasionally text me about how one of the girls sang along. Sometimes they just call to tell me how much they appreciate it.

Looking back on this experience, I can identify the sense of relatedness that prompted the song, the connection to this new little person. I can also see the other basic needs in there: the autonomy because I chose everything about it and a competence because I felt that I was making something that really suited my niece. This little gift has created much more relatedness in a tighter bond with my brother and his family. It seems to have that upward spiral shape so prevalent in well-being research.

What Does Research Say about Relatedness and Purpose?

This was just one experience, but it prompted me to explore relatedness and purpose in the literature. Does having a sense of relatedness either preclude or stimulate the motivation to pursue a purpose that is beyond the self? Or does pursuing a purpose beyond the self cause you to feel more relatedness? Is there any evidence of the upward spiral effect?

Pavey and colleagues have found some evidence that feelings of relatedness can inspire prosocial behavior. The study consisted of three experiments. The first was a sentence arrangement task and a word complete task with instructions that primed either relatedness, competence, or autonomy. To give you an idea of how this priming effect worked, here are the instructions to prime relatedness:

The researchers who developed this task are interested in your unique language style, and really appreciate and value your input. Do as best you can on your own, but please feel free to ask questions at any time; we are here to help and support you if you feel you need it.

In addition to instructions that primed each of the basic needs, priming words were contained within the tasks themselves. Those primed with relatedness showed a much higher interest in potentially volunteering, but it wasn’t clear what about the relatedness prime caused the difference.

The researchers hypothesized that the effect in the first experiment came from feelings of relatedness, so in the second experiment, they had participants write about experiences that promoted feelings of connectedness to others, autonomy, or competence. Again, the relatedness group tended to have stronger prosocial intentions.

They designed the last experiment to distinguish between empathy and relatedness. Empathy, known to increase prosocial tendencies, is an other-oriented emotional reaction to seeing another person in need. Relatedness, according to the researchers, is a feeling of bonding, connectedness, and identification with others. They controlled for empathy and mood, to be sure that they were seeing effects of relatedness. In this last experiment, experimenters used the same relatedness manipulation as in the first study, and used an objective measure of prosocial behavior: how much participants donated money to charity. Relatedness came through as sufficient without empathy or mood to create a significant increase in donation amount.

This differentiation between relatedness and empathy is consistent with my lullaby-writing experience. I wasn’t writing it because my niece was in need of it to alleviate some kind of suffering. I was just thinking about what I want this little person to feel and think before she falls asleep.

Altogether, these studies indicate that feelings of relatedness can increase prosocial tendencies. While this is helpful, the experiments only tested momentary prosocial behavior. It’s still unclear whether relatedness would increase actual effort spent in helping other people, and whether the effort would continue as these feelings dissipate or change.

To answer whether prosocial behavior increases relatedness, I look to a longitudinal study. Using the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study Sample, Piliavin and Siegl found that people who participated in other-oriented volunteering had better psychological well-being, and that the underlying reason was mattering. They define mattering as feeling noticed by the world around us, feeling that we are a significant part of the world around us, and feeling that we are relied upon in some significant way. Weinstein and Ryan imply that this construct of mattering is a proxy for their construct of Relatedness.

This construct of mattering seems very similar to the feeling that we are a part of something greater than ourselves. Taken together, this research suggests that a sense of meaning might be embedded in the basic need of relatedness, which both contributes to and results from prosocial behaviors.

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